


Lachesis

by aucune



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Gen, Post-Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-13
Updated: 2017-06-13
Packaged: 2018-11-13 18:23:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11190750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aucune/pseuds/aucune
Summary: The dead aren’t resting and the living have nothing.





	Lachesis

**Author's Note:**

> All mistakes are mine. Everything else belongs to somebody else.

The dead are nameless. They are faceless too.

He doesn’t remember them.

The figures have empty eyes, blurred lines, grasping hands. They cling to his clothes. They weep and they scream and they pray. They blame him.

The figures are three hundred twenty and three hundred sixty-four and hundreds and hundreds. Every person he killed, whose name he doesn’t know, whose face he doesn’t know. Every person he killed, who had parents, children, spouses.

The dead follow him, surround him, pull him to them. They want to be given back to their loved ones.

The dead have no face because he stripped them away. They have no names because he erased them. He forgot. No matter how hard he tries, he doesn’t remember. He doesn’t remember how many. He doesn’t remember who. He doesn’t remember why.

He remembers that he killed them. They remember that too.

They cling to his clothes and ask to be given back to life. They reach through his torso and ask to be given back to their loved ones. They embrace him in their frozen grip and ask to be given back to humanity.

.

Marcus tries to pray. He only has one branch from the Eden tree left –

_everything else is dead. burnt by radiations, as is the rest of earth. nothing is left, mom_

– but he’s been taught that symbols don’t matter as much as what they mean. He stills, reaching deep inside for something left of the little boy who watered a tree in the sky, for the last echoes of his mother’s preaching –

_everything has been destroyed once more, our home, the earth, so many lives. your paradise doesn’t exist anymore, mom. your dream doesn’t exist_

– Marcus closes his eyes to pray, only to be overwhelmed with sadness. He doesn’t want the forgiveness of a hypothetical god; he wants humanity to find happiness, a dream which seems so far away from their reach. They locked themselves up, they killed each other so that earth wouldn’t kill them –

_there is no paradise, mom_

– their place in this world is since long over.

.

At the equinoxes, the Lake People celebrate the world with tales and plays. In order to reduce the chasm between the tribes, all ambassadors are invited.

Octavia tells the story of Artemis, Apollo and Orion, insisting that Apollo helped his sister hang Orion in the sky in remorse, not mentioning the scorpion at all. A few young adults play an adventure in a world populated with fantastic beasts. Indra has an honour tale. The Delphi ambassador enthrals her public with a legend about the acceptance of death. Marcus tells a story of good neighbours, a farmer and a spirit living in a century-old tree at the bordure of his field.

Later, Octavia asks him about the origin of this tale which bears so little resemblance with the image she has of the Ark.

« I don’t know, he answers. I got it from a fellow guardswoman. She always had a story to pass time on uneventful watch.

\- I guess she isn’t here to share them anymore, she says.

\- No. I floated her. »

At her silent questioning, he adds:

« She was taking bribes. »

Her name was Sixtine Skandar. She had black hair and copper skin. Dark eyes framed by long lashes. She yelled in the airlock, she cursed him. He killed her, but it’s for her stories he remembers her.

Sixtine Skandar doesn’t come back to haunt him. A ghost with an unrecognisable voice does.

.

Each day, each hour, he has to persuade himself all over again. _For humanity,_ he repeats. _For the living._ He gets up, he legislates, he counsels, he closes a bit more the walls on everyone. _For humanity._

Are we not part of humanity? say the anonym figures. Were we not part of humanity? point the persons he killed.

 _I choose to make sure that we deserve to stay alive,_ asserts Abby in his memory.

Did we not deserve to survive? ask the dead. Did we not deserve to survive as much as you? Did we not deserve to survive more than _you_? they accuse.

Why did we have to die? rasp disembodied voices. To come back to the start? Locked up, oppressed, waiting for earth to be survivable again? Why did we have to die? insist the nameless mass. Why prune a dying tree? insist the faceless mass.

_For humanity._

We would be part of it, had you not killed us.

_For the living._

You will kill them tomorrow. You will kill them tomorrow when the disease spreads.

 _For the living,_ he persists. _For the living._

Marcus keeps going forward.

.

_I tried, mom. I tried to be the man you wanted me to be. I tried to be a better man. I tried… I failed. I failed the ones I wanted to save. I failed everyone._

_I did it again, mom. I tried to change but I did the exact same thing again._

_I’m sorry I can only disappoint you._

_._

The dead are hungry. They are hungry for recognition, they are hungry for meaning, they are hungry for justice.

He has nothing to give them.

They cling to his bones, to his ankles, to his organs. They reach through his torso but they can’t find what they are looking for. They question him every night but they can’t find what they want to know. They haunt him but they can’t find peace.

The words tear themselves from his bleeding throat: _There is no peace!_ _There is no meaning! You died for nothing. You died for nothing and I don’t remember you._

The anonym figures cling to his tears. They won’t find any comfort here either. Yet, they will come back. They will come back, because their killer doesn’t have any right to comfort either.

.

The living have names, faces, voices.

They have dark mine, hunched shoulders and cold eyes. They look at him with anger, contempt or disgust. The living are crowed, chained in shackles too small for their need to exist.

He cut their number, over and over again. He bled them. Over and over again.

Yet, they are still too many for the space they have left. Forced to wait forever for a dream stretched too thin, too long, they can’t do anything but look for someone to blame.

You threw my father out of the bunker, he reads in a look. You executed my son, he hears in a silence. You suffocated my wife, he understands in a gesture. The man I loved, you stole his place. My friend is dead because of you. He was a good man and you sucked the air out his lunges. You sacrificed the love of my life. You killed my parents. You floated my mother.

_When that door closes today, I need to be on the other side._

The living break their fingernails on their prison walls without looking to escape. They suffer knowing there is no solution. They grieve too soon, too fast, because they will need to do it again tomorrow.

There is no peace.

There never will be.


End file.
